Hey Hacky McGreenThumb: Please Remember That This Is Philadelphia, And You Can’t Even Trust Your Dirt
We know, we know: This spring and summer, you are all about your garden. (I mean, they stopped making Sparks, so you might as well just start honing your Old Lady Skills now, right?) Anyway, we feel you — and so do lots of other folks: It’s estimated that home gardening will see as much as a 20% spike in interest this year. So before you rush out to spend what used to be all your Sparks-and-drugs money at Terrain @ Styer’s, let us walk you through some things real quick; after all, our managing director Ruthie C. went to school for horticulture and knows all kinds of stuff about this stuff.
For one, read this piece from the NY Times last week about how, if you live in a city and are planning on planting a backyard garden, you MUST test your soil for lead. What good will all that work be if you wind up getting lead poisoning from your tomatoes? Gross. Getting that lead test done is simple and cheap, so do it. Meanwhile, if you’re a noob to this gardening stuff all around, Ruthie C. recommends The City Gardener’s Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Small Space Gardening by Linda Yang (pictured at right) for those who want to get back to the Earth but live among The Many. And as for planting? Do it now. We’re well past the last frost date, and this planting guide from Penn State Urban Gardening is a good one to go by. Got it? Great! Enjoy!
May 19th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
That NYT article read like a big agro scare piece warning folks to only buy your veggies from your trusty very safe Archer Daniels Midland-serviced supermarket. Yes lead is often an issue, especially if there are young kids or pregnant moms eating the food, but lead levels in the soil around old houses are usually less than the what the government says is the maximum for for adults for food. Plus home grown means you’re not eating all the chemical crap that industrial food growers spray and fertilize with, not to mention GMO. Remember kids: only Commies grow their own food.